Hometown hero

The music blared: "We are the champions." And finally, a
Vancouver hockey team is.

The music blared: "We are the champions." And finally, a Vancouver hockey team is.

A city whose hockey fans' hunger for success and disillusionment at its absence has accelerated like global warming during the Vancouver Canucks' barren 37-year campaign to win the Stanley Cup, was given a rare jolt of joy Sunday when the Vancouver Giants won junior hockey's Memorial Cup final 3-1 against the Medicine Hat Tigers.

It was just like old times at the Pacific Coliseum. Except for the winning part.

The rink on Renfrew Street, where the National Hockey League Canucks committed so many of their crimes of dispassion, shook with an overflow crowd of 16,281 fans unaccustomed to seeing the home team parade a trophy around the ice.

Milan Lucic was unaccustomed to seeing it, too. He grew up on the city's east side, not far from the Coliseum, and as a child saw the Canucks play when his uncle, Dan Kesa, was in the Vancouver lineup.

He never knew then he'd play in the same rink, in front of a larger crowd than the Canucks drew, and that his name would cause the loudest roar during one of Vancouver's happiest hockey days. Two seasons ago, Lucic was trying out for a Junior-B team. Sunday, he was named the most valuable player of the final.

"It's something special; the dream comes true," Milan's father, Dobro, a Serbian immigrant who works the Vancouver docks near the Coliseum as a longshoreman, said while family members of Giant players surged towards the team's dressing room. "You just wish that something like this could happen ... especially in Vancouver, in his hometown, in a building where he played as a kid."

"He started when he was 31/2 years old, right next door in the Agrodome," mom Snezana, Kesa's sister, said. "I told him: 'Milan, if you really want something, you have to work hard and it will come."

No Giant has worked harder than Lucic. He was ignored in the Western Hockey League bantam draft, famously made his Giants' debut wearing a chicken suit during an intermission race after he and a friend went to watch a game and were pulled from a concession-stand lineup, and came so far, so fast last season that the Boston Bruins chose him with a second-round NHL draft pick in June.

Lucic, who turns 19 next week, sparked his team Sunday with one first-period shift in which he demolished three Medicine Hat players then, challenged, beat Tigers heavyweight Jordan Bendfeld in a fight.

Lucic assisted on Michal Repik's Cup-winning goal at 15:05 of the third period.

It was a far nicer ending for all the Lucics than Game 7 of the WHL final two weeks ago in Medicine Hat, where Dobro was escorted out in handcuffs by police after Tigers fans made derogatory chants about his wife when insults shouted at Milan were ineffective. And Medicine Hat won 3-2 in double overtime.

Milan said he'd have done the same thing for his dad, who was not charged by police.

"All Milan does is work and compete hard," Giants coach Don Hay said. "He never backs up, just keeps going ahead and he carries the rest of his teammates with him. He is the real identity of the Vancouver Giants."

Lucic's first act after the celebrations began was to make sure the mentally challenged man who helps out around the Giants' training facility in Ladner could get past security and join players on the ice.

Giants minority owner Pat Quinn, who until this season spent his working life in the NHL, said: "I don't want to put the jinx on him, but Milan reminds me of another Vancouver kid who ended up in Boston and made it by scoring goals and with his fists and with courage. The way he checks and stands up physically, and he has developed a pair of hands ... this guy has become a helluva [NHL] prospect."

The other kid is Cam Neely, whose Hall-of-Fame career with the Bruins was a source of pride for Vancouverites and shame for Vancouver hockey. Neely, of course, was a Canuck until the franchise gave him to the Bruins two decades ago in exchange for the last gallon of Barry Pederson's NHL tank.

He was the great Canuck who got away, bringing success to someone else's city.

Typical Vancouver.

Typical the Canucks have never won the Stanley Cup. Typical the Giants failed to win the Memorial Cup last year in Moncton. Typical, it seemed, that they were on the verge of playing their way out of this tournament when they lost 1-0 Wednesday to Medicine Hat, which forced the Giants to become only the second team in 15 years to win the Memorial Cup after failing to top the preliminary round.

"If you're a fan of the game and a fan of Vancouver, the basic thinking is anytime you get a chance to win, you hold your breath because you want it so bad," Quinn said, acknowledging our fragile psyche when it comes to winning hockey championships. "But you think: Geez, are we going to miss out? It's so hard to win the final game of any championship. Some day, I hope the Canucks win one, too.

"These are great hockey fans in Vancouver. I don't know if they deserve something, but it's great to reward them."

Unlike with the Canucks, nobody is going to be able to die happy because the Giants won a Memorial Cup. But maybe we'll live a little happier for a while because they did, and because it happened here.

"Milan called [before the game] and said: 'Mom, are you pumped, are you ready?' " Snezana Lucic said. "I said: 'Yeah, are you?' He said: 'We're ready to bring the Cup home.' "

And yes, he meant Vancouver.

"It's a great day for the Vancouver Giants," Lucic said. "Hometown boy. There's nothing better than winning the Memorial Cup here. There's only one trophy out there that could top this one."

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